HeyJaredThe Book Club
Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented weekly by Sam Leith. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 7
- Latest publication
- Sep 16, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 8, 2026
Latest episodes
Anand Gopal: Days of Love and Rage (opens the original)
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In this week's Book Club podcast, Sam Leith is joined by The New Yorker writer Anand Gopal, whose new book, long-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize, is Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Revolution. What does freedom mean once the dictator has gone? Anand explains why he spent eight years reporting on Manbij, a city of 150,000 that pushed out the Assad regime and set about building a democracy from scratch – and how the argument over what came next split the revolution in two. They discuss the
Hannah Richell: An Ocean and a Day (opens the original)
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In this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam Leith is joined by bestselling novelist Hannah Richell to discuss her new memoir, An Ocean and a Day. When Hannah’s husband died in a surfing accident, her life in Australia was shattered. Suddenly, she was a single mother to two young children, navigating a grief she could never have imagined. Her memoir traces that journey from the moment of the accident, but, more uniquely, looks beyond those first years of loss – to what grief looks like with the benefit
James Marriott: The Dawn of a Post-Literate Society (opens the original)
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In this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam Leith is joined by The Times columnist James Marriott, whose new book is The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-literate Society . Are we witnessing the end of the reading age? James explains why literacy has shaped not just our culture but the way we think – and why its decline could have profound consequences for politics, democracy and public life. They discuss how television, TikTok and short-form video have transformed our attentio
Simon Sebag Montefiore: The Cauldron (opens the original)
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My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Simon Sebag Montefiore, the author of a number of fantastic books, including The Cauldron , which released this week. Simon and I talk about the making of the modern middle east, and how we forget some of the most fundamental groups who shaped this part of the world into the region that we know of today. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more. For more Spectator podcast
Celebrating 160 years of Beatrix Potter (opens the original)
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This week marks the 160th anniversary of Beatrix Potter’s birth. In this week’s Book Club podcast, I’m joined by Penny Bradshaw, author of An A–Z of Beatrix Potter , and the historian and biographer Kathryn Hughes, whose books include Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World , George Eliot and The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton . We plunge into the Potterverse. Does Potter get her due as a literary writer? How animal are her animals? And what went wrong for Ginger
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